Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., on Sunday blasted President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan as “happy talk” with “no plan.
In an interview on ABC News’ “This Week,” Sasse, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, delivered a searing condemnation of the withdrawal, saying the decision wound up putting U.S. troops at risk.
“There is clearly no plan. There has been no plan,” he said. “Their plan has basically been happy talk. People have died and people are going to die because President Biden decided to rely on happy talk instead of reality.”
“I’m not sure what’s driving the happy talk, but I know what the consequences are going to be,” Sasse added. “The consequences are going to be a return of the Taliban that has been willing to provide safe haven to terrorists in the past. And right now they don’t even have the power to make a decision about who they are or aren’t going to provide safe haven to.”
Sasse lamented there are “so many different groups who want to turn Afghanistan into the global capital city of jihad,” calling the Biden administration approach “over-the-horizon talk that is laughably shallow.”
“Joe Biden put our forces at risk by having no plan for how to evacuate,” declared. “We are absolutely at risk. And we are at risk because the president has been so unbelievably weak, abandoning Bagram [Airbase] will be read about in military textbooks for decades as one of the stupidest military blunders ever.”
He asserted Biden’s claim that military advisers were supportive “isn’t true.”
“We have been in a ridiculously untenable position for the sake of evacuating these folks and keeping our word,” he said. “Thirteen servicemen and women died this week, and our families across this country are in prayer for those families and for the ultimate sacrifice they have made, but they were doing something to make sure that no one was left behind. The commander-in-chief should be doing the same, which is make sure that no one is left behind.”
Sasse also blasted the reported passage of a list of U.S. citizens and Afghan allies to the Taliban ahead of the evacuation.
“They passed a list of American citizens and America’s closet allies, people who fought alongside us, they passed those lists to the Taliban, relying on them, thinking they could trust on them,” he said. “It was stupid then. It’s insane now.”
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